linuxmemes @lemmy.world bleistift2 @sopuli.xyz 1mo ago

Sorry, Mario, but the software is in a different architecture.

Meme transcription:

[Guy looking happy:] Hey, there’s a Linux version of that program I like

[Guy looking disappointed:] Closed Source, no ARM support

42 comments

I'm on x86_64 and I think I probably will be until I die because I don't see the point of switching
- x86_64 patents lapse sometime this year, btw
  
  sadly, there are a lot of important newer x86 patents that are still years off, and new ones are added every few years, so the best you could do next year is a 20 year old chip.
- Battery life in a laptop?
  
  Yeah it's never really an issue for me. I just make sure to bring my charger with me if I'm out somewhere with my laptop. Most computing is done on my desktop though, I don't use a laptop very much
  
  Either you get app compatability or battery life.
  
  Wait newer cpus got that too so I'm good with x86
  
  Yeah, that one would be huge, it's pretty much the only thing I envy Mac users.
  
  My T470 still gets me 10hours. It's enough
  
  I already get 8-10 hours of active use out of my T14. Who wants to do more stuff for longer without a dedicated space for it?
  
  I get sick of coffee shop stuff after like 3 hours.
- The point will be when all the consumer/enthusiast hardware is ARM it will become the only reasonable option to buy.
- Same also maybe with arm64 on my mobile phone
RISC-V :'>
isn't there ways to enable compatibility for non-arm software in arm machines?
- There hasn't been much to my knowledge, but thanks to Asahi Linux's efforts now Fedora ships out if the box with FEX as a solution as of last month (not sure compatibility, performance or ease of install for other distros, just reporting what I've heard) :
  https://fedoramagazine.org/new-in-fedora-running-x86-programs-on-arm-systems/
- Yes, e.g. with Qemu or FEX.
  
  How good is fex compared to qemu/KVM?
- You might be thinking of Box64?
- lol I usually just try my luck with yay’s “build anyway?”
Upvote for alt text
My Little Rant on Risc V and Arm vs x86, because I have an opportunity to dump this here and get it off out of my system.

RISC systems will maybe perhaps take over market share from x86 in the mobile laptop space, but essentially there's no point in anything else. If I remember correctly, RISC came before CISC in computing, and many old mainframes were RISC. But then people started thinking: "What if we can do multiple operations in a single instruction?" And therefore CISC was born and he did wonders for performance.

Yes, the reduced instructions are very nice for battery life. Who doesn't like good battery life? People who like performance, that's for sure. So if you run a programme that is programmed for CISC primarily, and then you just change the compiling target to a RISC system, then you will basically use the same battery life, but with worse performance than just using a CISC system, Since multiple clocks now need to do something that has happened in a single clock on CISC. I fully understand that having a monopoly on computing hardware is very bad. I don't get the hype around arming normal computers because it will just shift the monopoly from one to another, the harm to innovation remains. Risc V is interesting because it would break the monopoly, but the problem is it uses a pushover license. So companies would reap all of the benefits for developing a proprietary risk system, and everyone who likes to compete is free to use the reduced, almost unusable base spec. I mean, compare the BSD kernel to the Linux kernel. It's nowhere close. So with that being said, I think x86 in public domain would be the nicest thing to happen. Thank you for listening to my useless TED talk.

Edit: Thanks for the interesting replies, people! Time will tell what will have happened, so let's find out together.
- RISC vs CISC doesn't really matter. Both have heavily borrowed from each other. The big differences are design goals, x86 processors are targeting higher power processing with few very fast cores while Arm and Risc V mostly target embedded and low power computing or a huge number of smaller cores.
- SIMD and CISC are not tied together. ARM has SIMD. RISC-V has vector extensions like old mainframes. they can both do SIMD and combined instructions jush fine. they just don't have dedicated circuitry for them.
- If you want to replace an x86 based machine with a RISC-V based one, you are in for a bad surprize: speed, or, more precisely, the absence if it.
  
  While a good ARM core can already be useful in a PC, the RISC-V is still far behind in performance.
  
  Funny, though, Trump might unintentionally fix this by driving China to use non-X86, non-ARM platforms, and here, RISC-V is the best choice. When the Chinese throw their rather substantial R&D power behind this architecture, it might actually getting somewhere.
Meme transcription

FYI, Lemmy supports Alt text, so you don't have to include the transcription in the post body.

See also https://slrpnk.net/post/12346945
- I know, but for most memes a single line of text is insufficient.
Discord app on Linux is like this.
Also Steam
- Discord is just a website.
  
  True
- Oh my word if I read "today is your lucky day!" and am told to download yet another .deb file"...
  
  I'll probably download it and tolerate it because D&D is on there, but darn it if I won't be mildly displeased about it! :) The real campaign is convincing my friends to use something else!
  
  I use discord web nowadays so I don't need to deal with that
Be lucky you get a Linux port at all. Back in the old days there just wouldn't be one, no source or not. Between more commercial binaries available and with Wine cranking along, we have a larger choice than ever of software to run on Linux. I don't want to go back to the days when I just got a tarball and ran 'make'.
- I found Linux support much more common 20 years ago, but that’s exposure bias
What hardware are you using OP?
- Raspberry Pi?
  
  No, seriously.

42 comments